Moon Party
Listener Elizabeth Dragoo recalls a slumber party she hosted with her friends as they tried to stay up late to watch the moon landing live on TV.
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Elizabeth: Hi BackStory. My name’s Elizabeth. I live in Goshen, Indiana. I was born in 1955 and graduated high school in 1973, so like lots of people my age, I mean we kind of grew up with the space program. I was 14 years old the year of the moon landing. It happened in the summer. I was just going into ninth grade. So I decided to have a slumber party because I was so excited that they were going to land people on the moon. I remember not a lot about it, but I do remember several of us girls in the family room at home watching the TV. I and maybe one other girl were the only ones who managed to stay awake for the actual feet on the moon, and I was super annoyed about that because I thought this is so important and it’s such a big part of our lives.
Elizabeth: I was so excited about it. I didn’t know why everybody wouldn’t be excited about it. I remember very distinctly the girl next to me who had fallen asleep on the floor. I jostled her when they were getting ready to put the foot on the moon’s surface and saying, “Wake up. They’re going to step on the moon.” She just growled at me, “Leave me alone. I’m sleeping.” I just couldn’t imagine why everyone wasn’t as excited about it as I was. But watching on the TV, the video is kind of grainy and wobbly, but I just remember being so fascinated. It seemed, at least my memory is, it seemed to take a while for them to actually get out of the space capsule. That’s probably why all my friends had fallen asleep because they were tired of waiting for them to actually open the door, go down the ladder, put the foot on the moon.
Elizabeth: I remember looking out at the moon and there were probably millions of us who did the same exact thing, just had to go outdoors and look up at this thing and see if we could see it and try to imagine people walking around on it. It still blows my mind. It still is amazing to me that we did that. Looking back, I think the moon landing just means looking back at a time when we were focused and ready to work together to get that done. Kennedy put out that challenge, “We’re going to put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth and we’re going to do it in this decade.” Everybody had to scramble to get it to happen.
Elizabeth: I just wonder the way things are now if we could do that. There’s so much divisiveness in our politics right now and so much going on in this country and so many crises that we need to deal with. I wish would could come together that same way.
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Moon Landing Lesson Set
On July 20, 1969, the United States celebrated an amazing scientific achievement: landing the Apollo 11 on the surface of the moon. As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two men to walk on the lunar surface, the American public watched with nationalistic pride. This singular moment was the culmination of a decade of extensive efforts by the U.S. government and the scientific community. It also served as a public declaration of international supremacy during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
This lesson reflects on the legacy of the “space race” during the 1960s. Fifty years after the fact, the moon landing is still celebrated as one of the greatest achievements in human history. However, this era is also often treated with an uncritical nostalgia. For many Americans, the Apollo 11 mission represents a moment of unity at a calamitous time in American history. For other Americans, the “space race” was a distraction from the fight for civil rights and the intractable conflict in Vietnam.
As you go through the lesson, encourage students to think critically about these contradictions. Why does the Apollo 11 mission remain the subject of American nostalgia after fifty years? What role did the space race play in advancing social, economic, and geopolitical interests? How should we reflect on this time period as students of history?
